


February

by eternaleponine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clexa Week 2021, F/F, Free day, Military, Serious Injuries, Warning: Brief/Vague Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29899263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: And February was so long that it lasted into March and found us walking a path alone together...- Dar Williams, "February"When Lexa is deployed for what will hopefully be the last time, Clarke thinks the worst thing that could happen is being told her wife has been killed in combat.  But when she walks into Lexa's hospital room and Lexa asks, "Do I know you?" she realizes there are things that are far, far worse.For Clexa Week 2021 - Day 7 - Free DayYou can view the associated moodboardhere.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 42
Kudos: 327
Collections: Clexaweek2021





	February

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** Brief/Vague Suicidal Ideation
> 
>  **Note/Warning:** I didn't do any research on amnesia and have made absolutely no effort to be medically accurate. The story is fictional and amnesia is used as a plot device. If this is something that will bother you, please click the back button now.

The worst thing Clarke could imagine when Lexa went off to war was the possibility that she might not come back. That one day there would be a knock on the door and two uniformed officers and—

And then the phone rang, telling her there had been an accident. (An accident? An _accident_?! A bomb wasn't an _accident_!) Lexa was alive but she was hurt, badly hurt, and she might not make it and—

And then the waiting. The daily, sometimes hourly calls to and from Lexa's doctors to see how she was doing, whether she was any better today (or any worse) and did they think she would be stable enough to transport home soon, until finally one day they said yes, yes, she was coming home, they would call Clarke as soon as the plane landed. She could meet them at the hospital and—

And walking into the hospital room where Lexa was laid up in a bed, looking worse than Clarke had hoped but better than she'd feared, and at least her face, her beautiful face, was unscathed (and it was petty and horrible that that was one of her first thoughts and Clarke knew it but couldn't change it) and she wanted to rush to her but then Lexa looked at her and asked in a voice flat and completely unlike her own, "Do I know you?" 

Clarke stopped, her breath stuck in her chest, her lungs burning with the need for air as she waited, waited for Lexa to wink, to laugh, to say, "Just kidding." It would be a cruel joke, and Lexa was never cruel, but it would still be better than the alternative which was Lexa looking to the doctor, a frown creasing lines between her brows that hadn't been there when she left, and asking, "Do I know her?"

And the doctor looking at her helplessly, her mouth hanging open like she didn't know what to say to either of them and—

And Clarke walked out.

* * *

Lexa watched the woman go, wondering if she had upset her, or if she should be upset or—

"Do I know her?" she asked again. 

Her doctor looked at her and smiled, but her eyes were sad. "You do," she said. "She's your wife."

Oh.

 _Wife._

It was a nice word, a soft word, comforting like...

Lexa didn't know like what. Comfort was forgotten along with so many other things, replaced by pins and rods and replacement parts that kept everything in line while her body tried to knit itself back together around a million points of pain. 

"Wife," she said out loud, and it sounded right, and tasted good on her tongue, like chocolate cake and buttercream frosting and—

"Her name is Clarke," the doctor supplied. 

"Clarke." It sounded like a man's name, but the woman who had been there a second ago but was gone now (had Lexa only imagined her?) definitely wasn't a man. 

Because if she was a man, she would be Lexa's husband, not her wife. 

Husband didn't taste good at all. Lexa didn't even need to say it to know that. It was bitter like gunsmoke and black coffee.

"Clarke," Lexa said again, waiting for some sense to fill in the blanks around the name, but there was nothing. She sighed and closed her eyes, too tired to fight through the painkiller fog to chase after something that wasn't there... and maybe she'd only imagined it after all...

* * *

She'd thought death was the worst thing that could happen to a person, to a relationship, but Clarke soon discovered that going day after day to see the woman she'd pledged her life and love to, watching her body mend but her mind remain shattered was infinitely, infinitely worse. 

Because of the hope. The hope that one day – today – she would walk in and Lexa would smile and hold out her arms, hug her tight and kiss her and say she was sorry, so sorry she'd forgotten but she remembered now, and everything was going to be okay. The hope that Clarke couldn't kill but that was slowly killing her as one day became someday became, 'It doesn't seem likely...'

The only consolation she had was that Lexa having completely erased her from her mind meant she didn't remember that Clarke hadn't said goodbye before she left. She'd been so angry, because they'd talked about Lexa getting out not once but a hundred times, a thousand, and Lexa had said yes, I know, I know, but never done it and even admitted once (in the midst of a fight the aftermath of which had left them both with dark marks peppering their bodies that weren't bruises) that she'd been putting it off because she wasn't sure she was ready to let go of the past, even as it created an ever-growing rift between them and the future they dreamed of. Clarke hadn't pushed because there had been peace for so long...

Until there wasn't, and Lexa's reserve unit was called up and deployed almost before they had a chance to finish reading the orders, and Clarke had stayed in bed, refusing to go see her off, refusing to put on a brave face that would allow Lexa to leave feeling like any of this was even remotely okay. 

At least Lexa didn't remember that.

It was cold comfort. 

Weeks passed, and the doctors sat her down. Clarke didn't miss the box of tissues strategically placed on the corner of the desk, in easy reach like they expected her to cry, like they'd done this before and knew that was the inevitable outcome. She resolved not to use it, not to need it. Whatever they had to say, she would take it with a stoic face... and fall apart later, in private. 

"You need to start thinking about options for long-term care," the doctor said. "The good news is that Lexa is forming new memories and doesn't seem to have difficulty remembering what happened since the accident. She's healing well, and we have every hope that she will make a full recovery – physically – and will, in time, be able to function on her own. But she still has a long road ahead of her. Weeks, if not months, of physical therapy and occupational therapy, psychotherapy... It's going to be a lot, even after we discharge her. I've put together some options for—"

"She can't come home?" Clarke asked. "If she's well enough to discharge—"

"That would be one option," the doctor said. "But getting her to and from appointments would be a full-time job in and of itself. It's a lot to take on, and no one would blame you if—"

"I would," Clarke snapped. "I would blame me. For better or worse, in sickness and in health. That's what I promised her."

"I understand," the doctor said, "but given the circumstances—"

"Just because she's forgotten our vows doesn't mean I get to," Clarke said. "When she's ready to leave here, she's coming home. I'll do whatever it takes. End of story." She lifted her chin, daring the doctor to say another word about it.

* * *

"You have a visitor," the nurse told Lexa, and Lexa could hear the smile in her voice. She didn't have to look up to know who it was, because only one person ever came to visit her: Clarke.

Her wife. 

Who she hadn't imagined after all.

There was still only a void where there should have been a deep well of memory and emotion accompanying the word, the concept... the face. But little by little it was beginning to fill in with new moments that Lexa grasped onto and hoarded. It didn't make up for what was missing but she knew – because she'd been told, because she asked – it wasn't likely that what was gone would ever come back. Maybe bits and pieces, but not enough – never enough – to get the full picture of what she'd had. 

She could only do whatever it took to start piecing together a new puzzle.

Which was what she was doing right now, literally, because it exercised her brain and her fine motor skills and taught her problem-solving and frustration tolerance and all kinds of things they thought she needed to relearn. Maybe she did. 

"Can I help?" Clarke asked, sitting down at the table, not across from her but not right next to her, either. 

"Ask her," Lexa said, scowling at one of her many therapists, who was currently distracted by another patient. "She's the one who makes the rules." She set down the piece she'd been trying to find a place for, then picked it up again and handed it to Clarke, just to have an excuse to touch her. 

Did she need an excuse?

From the little jolt of pain that flashed in Clarke's eyes every time they made contact, even accidentally, she knew the answer was yes. 

Clarke studied the border of the puzzle, and the sections Lexa had managed to complete, and fitted the piece into place. "There," she said. "See?"

Lexa nodded. "Thank you." She smiled at Clarke, willing her to look at her and see it, to look at her and feel something – anything – other than brokenhearted. Because even as Lexa healed, her pain decreasing incrementally day by day, Clarke's never seemed to get any better, and maybe got worse.

 _Why do you do this?_ , Lexa wanted to ask. _Why do you keep coming back if it hurts you?_

But she didn't ask. She couldn't. Because if she did, Clarke might start wondering the same thing, and she might stop, and the one bright point in Lexa's day, the one thing she had to look forward to, would disappear. 

Together, they finished the puzzle, and when her therapist finally came back to Lexa she beamed with pride. "Great job!" she said. She probably knew Clarke had helped, but that was one of the things Lexa was supposed to be learning, too: it was okay to ask for help when you needed it. It was okay to not be okay. 

"Am I done?" Lexa asked, pushing herself up from her chair before she remembered she wasn't supposed to do that. She wobbled, and Clarke caught her, looping an arm around her waist and propping her up. 

"Damn it!" Lexa snarled, frustration – fury – washing over her in a violent crimson wave. "God fucking—" She reached to sweep her arm across the table, but before she could send the stupid puzzle to the floor to lie as scattered and shattered as her own stupid body and mind Clarke caught her hand. 

"It's okay," Clarke told her. "You're okay. Just breathe." 

She pressed Lexa's hand to her chest, and Lexa could feel her heart pounding and wondered if she was afraid. 

_I would never hurt you,_ Lexa thought, but she knew it was too late. She knew she already had.

* * *

Clarke wandered from room to room, picking up pictures and dusting them off, then carefully packing them away. She told herself it was so Lexa wouldn't be upset by mementos of the past she couldn't remember and probably never would. She told herself it wouldn't be fair.

The truth was Clarke couldn't bear the constant reminders that the woman she was about to bring home wasn't the woman in those pictures. She had her face, and sometimes her smile, although it was crookeder now and less certain. She didn't even have Lexa's voice; it had been replaced by something flatter, drained of the vibrancy and life that had once drawn Clarke to her like a moth to a flame. And her laugh... 

Clarke had never heard this woman who wore Lexa's battered, bruised skin laugh.

She changed the sheets and put out fresh towels and checked each room for loose rugs and sharp corners, not wanting Lexa to get tripped up or hurt. It was like babyproofing, only for a grown woman Clarke had once called 'babe' but never 'baby'. 

What would she call her now?

* * *

"Come on, L-Lexa," Clarke said. "It's time to go home."

Lexa heard the hesitation, the slight stutter on the L of her name that made her think that just for a second Clarke had been about to say another word that started with L out of habit. 

They packed up her things, clothes mostly, and Lexa didn't argue when they made her get into a wheelchair to be rolled out to the car even though she could have walked. She didn't want to make a scene, didn't want to draw attention that might make Clarke rethink her decision to bring Lexa home. Which was a place she didn't remember but the word felt like fuzzy blankets and tasted like popcorn and warm cookies. It felt like a place she wanted to be. 

"You got it?" Clarke asked as Lexa transferred herself from the wheelchair to the passenger's seat of the car. (Clarke's car? It had to be Clarke's car. Unless it was her car? Did Lexa have a car?)

Lexa nodded, pulling her right leg – which was still in a clunky boot that she was only allowed to take off when she showered (sitting down – did Clarke have a stool at home? Would she have gotten one?) and slept (and even then it was replaced with a lighter splint) – in after her. She hoped the effort didn't show on her face. 

Clarke closed the door and went around to the driver's side, slipping into her seat and clicking her seatbelt into place. She looked expectantly at Lexa, eyebrows raised as if to say, 'Well? This car isn't moving until you're buckled in and I'm not doing it for you.' Or maybe, 'You're not a child. Buckle up and let's go.' Or, 'You've got this, babe.'

Lexa reached over her shoulder, muscles straining in ways she was sure they didn't used to, and grabbed the belt, pulling it across her body. Metal clanked against metal as she tried to get the… buckle? into the buckler?... but she couldn't get them lined up, and her throat was starting to close and her brain to boil and her hands—

Clarke's hand closed over hers, gently guiding it, lining things up so that when Lexa pushed there was a click, and a quick tug told her it was fastened. "Teamwork makes the dream work," Clarke said with a smile that masked a sob, and she twisted the key in the ignition and pointed them toward home.

Lexa woke when Clarke gently shook her knee. "We're here," she said. 

Lexa blinked bleary eyes and squinted even though the car sat under the shade of trees. She had a million questions – had they driven far? had she slept long? was this really their house? had they lived here long? had they moved into it before they got married or after? – but she didn't ask because it took all of her concentration to open the car door and realize she was still buckled in and untangle herself from the belt and push it open and get one foot out and then the other. Clarke held the door for her so it didn't swing back and hit her while she struggled, but made no move to help until Lexa had inched herself to the edge of the seat, her feet firmly planted on the ground. 

"You got it?" Clarke asked, and Lexa wondered if that was going to become a thing, and if she minded if it did. It would be nice to have a thing. Wouldn't it? A new thing, a thing she remembered. 

Lexa tried to heave herself up, but the angle was awkward and she thought she might hit her head or topple over. "Can you…?" She held out a hand.

"Of course," Clarke said, taking it and gripping her elbow as well to give Lexa more support, a little more leverage, and Lexa pulled herself to her feet with a groan. "Good job," Clarke said. "It's not far."

From what Lexa could see the house was all one level, but there were two steps up to the front door, which might as well have been Denali. She would get there, she'd been told, but she wasn't there yet. Only it didn't look like she had a choice. 

"You've got this," Clarke said, still there at her side, still holding her arm in a grip maybe a little too tight but Lexa wasn't going to complain, and then, "I've got you."

They climbed the steps. Two steps, one at a time, with a break to breathe in the middle, and for a second Lexa thought Clarke might hug her. For a second, she thought Clarke might forget…

Clarke shook her head, shook herself, and the moment passed. 

They went inside. 

"This is your room," Clarke told her, after showing her the kitchen and the living room and the bathroom (which did have a stool in the tub, but Lexa was going to need help climbing in). 

It was… a room. There was a bed and a dresser and a closet and a mirror and not much else. It didn't look like anyone lived here. Not in a long time. Maybe not ever.

"Was this always my room?" Lexa asked. 

"Of course not," Clarke said. "You slept—" She stopped, shook her head, looked down and away and anywhere but at Lexa. Which told Lexa everything she needed to know, probably, but she asked anyway.

"Whose room was it?"

"No one's," Clarke admitted. "A guest room." She swallowed, almost meeting Lexa's eyes but not quite. "We talked about making it a kid's room. We were going to adopt."

_Oh._

"You were adopted, you know."

Lexa didn't know. She'd been told in the hospital that her parents had both passed, her father a few years ago and her mother long before either of them were ready for her to be gone. But she didn't remember.

"Boy or girl?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke pressed her lips together, her chin trembling and her throat working hard against a lump so big Lexa swore she could see it. "One of each," she said finally. "Maybe."

Lexa knew she should let it go, but she didn't. She couldn't. "Why didn't we?" she asked. "What were we waiting for?"

Clarke looked at her like she ought to know, and she _ought_ to know, but she didn't. 

"You to get out," Clarke said finally. "I hated the idea of losing you, but the idea of our children losing you?" She shook her head. "I couldn't do it."

_Oh._

"Do you hate me?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke looked at her finally, eyes red-rimmed with tears she wouldn't allow to fall. "I miss you."

Lexa sighed. "I miss me too."

* * *

Lexa's question rattled in Clarke's head as she double- and triple-checked that everything Lexa might need was where she could easily find it, because she didn't know where everything was kept anymore. Not because Clarke had moved anything, but because she just didn't know. 

It jabbed into all the tender places of Clarke, picking at scabs and unstitching wounds, tearing her apart from the inside out until she was drowning, just barely keeping her head above the tide of blood that gushed from her battered and broken heart.

Because the answer wasn't simple. It wasn't black or white, yes or no. What she'd told Lexa was true, but it wasn't the whole truth. 

Neither of them was ready for the whole truth.

Lexa clomped into the kitchen while Clarke was making dinner, and Clarke's skin prickled expectantly, waiting for arms to wrap around her waist and an often-cold nose to tuck into the crook of her neck, making her shiver and curse and laugh. 

But the touch didn't come. Lexa just stood frozen in the middle of the floor, and Clarke finally turned to look at her. 

Lexa's eyes flicked from one cabinet to the next to the next, her fingers twitching at her sides, lines creasing her brow, etching themselves deeper and deeper with each passing second of indecision. 

Clarke choked on the taste of blood as another fissure opened in her chest. "What do you need?"

"Water," Lexa croaked. 

Clarke moved to get it for her but stopped. She wasn't doing Lexa any favors by coddling her. "Glasses are in the upper cabinet to the right of the sink," she said. "Tap water is drinkable but there's a pitcher of filtered water in the fridge. Or if you want your water bottle it's on the top shelf, same cabinet as the glasses."

Lexa lurched into motion. She got a glass and filled it from the tap, gulped it down and filled it again. She stood with her hip cocked – she had no other way of standing, really, with one foot in a boot that made her legs lopsided – leaning against the counter for support. "Can I help?" she asked. 

"I've got it," Clarke said. "You can rest."

"I don't want to rest," Lexa said. "I want to help."

Clarke looked at her, the familiar set of her jaw when she got stubborn, and that was Lexa all over. She sucked in a breath. "At least sit," she said. "There's stools on the other side of the island. I'll get you some vegetables to cut up for salad."

Lexa wrinkled her nose, and Clarke wrinkled hers right back. "You like salad," she said. "Not that tragic iceberg, cabbage, and desiccated carrot shred stuff from the hospital, obviously. But a good salad with lots of veggies, maybe some avocado… and chickpeas. You love chickpeas. I think we have some." She glanced at the pantry, but she didn't have x-ray vision and it could wait anyway. "Trust me," she said. 

"I do trust you, Clarke."

Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper, and more like the voice Clarke remembered than it had been since her return. Another crack opened in Clarke's chest.

They made dinner and ate it, and Lexa conceded that she liked salad after all, and Clarke smiled through the pain. It might have been easier if she'd turned up her nose, if her taste buds had forgotten along with the rest of her.

"Why would I hate you?" Clarke asked that night, busying herself strapping Lexa's splint around her ankle so she couldn't twist it some way it wasn't meant to go in her sleep, or get up in the middle of the night and stumble and undo all the healing that had been done. 

"I stole your wife from you," Lexa said. 

"You _are_ my wife," Clarke said, her voice too sharp and too loud in this blank canvas of a room. Which belied her words, because if she really believed them, why had she moved all – well, most – of Lexa's things in here? If it was true, why weren't they sharing a room anymore? Why weren't they sharing a bed? 

Because it would be too tempting to believe the lie if they did, and she didn't want Lexa to feel pressured, and—

Clarke pulled the last strap of Velcro into place and helped Lexa into bed, tucking her in. She brushed back a stray strand of hair from her forehead and pressed a soft kiss in its place. 

"Am I?" Lexa asked as Clarke slid through the door, so quietly Clarke wasn't sure who she was asking.

* * *

Lexa met their friends again for the first time, and at least she didn't break Clarke's heart by remembering them. 

It was cold comfort. 

But she couldn't take their hopeful eyes and Clarke hated their pitying smiles and soon it was just the two of them again. Against the world?

But the world – her world, their world – was so small now.

Clarke drove her to appointments and drove her home again. Sometimes she stayed, but sometimes it was too painful for one or the other or both of them, and anyway she had a life to get back to. 

For Lexa there was no going back. There was no back to go to... except in infrequent and unpredictable moments when her mind knew things she didn't know it knew, like where the big pasta pot was kept and what channel to tune to when Clarke asked her to put on the news. She knew every aisle in the little grocery store on the corner, even as she struggled to connect the words on the crumpled list she'd clutched all the way there with objects on the shelves, and she finally had to admit defeat when a wall of brightly colored boxes brought her to tears.

"Lexa?" Clarke's voice through the phone – the only number programmed into it other than her million-and-one doctors – sounded already half-panicked, and Lexa wanted to reassure her but all that came out was a choked sob. "I'll be right there," she said, and she was, putting an arm around Lexa and pulling her in, shielding her and sheltering her from the wide-eyed stares of the other shoppers. 

"What's wrong?" Clarke asked, when Lexa had calmed down enough to speak, or at least breathe again. 

Lexa shoved the list at her and jabbed at the offending word: Cereal.

"You're in the right aisle," Clarke said, and she had become so good at walking the line between soothing and patronizing Lexa's anger ebbed away, leaving in its wake the real feeling behind it: embarrassment. 

"I don't know what _kind_ ," Lexa said. "I don't know what kind you like. I don't know what kind _I_ like. I don't know _anything_ anymore and I. Hate. It." 

"I hate it too," Clarke said. 

Lexa blinked. She wasn't sure what she'd expected Clarke to say, but that wasn't it. She was always so careful, tiptoeing around Lexa's feelings because she wasn't to blame for this. (Except she was. Lexa knew she was, because Clarke had wanted her to get out and she hadn't done it, and if she had they could be living the life they were meant to instead of... doing whatever this was.) 

"But it's only cereal," Clarke finished. "Pick whatever looks good."

"Just tell me what I'm supposed to get," Lexa said. _Tell me who I'm supposed to be._

Clarke looked at her, then shook her head. "You're the one who practically begged me to let you do the shopping on your own," she said. "Don't give up now." 

"I didn't _beg_ ," Lexa said. 

Clarke gave her a look, and Lexa felt something that felt suspiciously like a laugh rising in her chest, but she swallowed it down because everyone in the store already thought she was crazy. "You can do this," Clarke told her.

Lexa studied the shelves, her eyes skipping from one box to the next, but they were all just variations on the same theme so she just grabbed two boxes at random and shoved them into her basket. She took the list back from Clarke and doggedly dragged herself through the rest of the store with Clarke trailing behind her like a keeper following a usually docile but potentially dangerous animal wandering through the zoo. 

When she reached the end of the list she trudged to the checkout and handed over the crumpled bills Clarke had given her, keeping her eyes down because she didn't want anyone she might see again to remember her face. The cashier gave her back her change and wished her a good day. Lexa mumbled her thanks and shuffled to the door.

"The car's this way," Clarke said, when Lexa turned toward home. 

"I can walk," Lexa said, even though her foot ached and burned and she'd almost certainly overdone it.

"I know," Clarke said. "But I wouldn't mind the company."

* * *

If there was a rhyme or reason to what had stuck in Lexa's subconscious versus what had been lost, it was a logic Clarke didn't grasp. She tried not to let it get to her or take it personally, and sometimes she even succeeded. Sometimes Clarke forgot who Lexa wasn't long enough to appreciate who she was. 

But it never lasted. The past was always there just under the surface. Like when she came home one day to find Lexa folding laundry.

"Is everything all right?" she asked. Had Lexa had some kind of accident she was trying to cover up? Of her sundry medical issues that had never been one of them, but... But she was holding up a t-shirt – one of Clarke's, carefully placing it on the cushion next to her and folding it with meticulous creases like it was her first day working retail and she was determined to impress. 

Lexa looked up, and the corners of her mouth tucked up like just the sound of Clarke's voice was enough to make her want to smile regardless of what she was saying, but that was probably just wishful thinking. "Yes," she said. "Why?"

"Because you _hate—_ " She stopped herself, her own lips starting to twitch, but as so often happened it was a battle between smiling and frowning. 

"Hate what?" Lexa asked, her head tipped just a little, and Lexa – _her_ Lexa – had never done that. Or maybe she had and Clarke just didn't remember. She'd had this way of tilting her head down, ducking her chin and looking up through her lashes that—

 _Don't,_ Clarke told herself. _Don't do that to yourself. Don't go there._

"Doing laundry," Clarke said softly, managing not to choke but only barely.

"Oh." Lexa looked at the basket at her feet and the neat piles in front of her. "I do?"

"You did." Clarke knew she should let it go, because what good did it do either of them to reminisce on things that Lexa didn't remember and Clarke couldn't but needed to forget. But Lexa was watching her, waiting for... something. An explanation, maybe, or at least an elaboration. 

Or maybe Clarke just wanted her to be. 

But before the curiosity – or whatever it was, and she hated that she couldn't even read Lexa's face anymore, couldn't know or even guess just by looking at her what she was thinking and feeling – could fade, she gave in, and let just a little bit of what she was constantly holding in out. 

"The house was never cleaner than when I asked you to do the laundry. The kitchen would be spotless and the bathroom sparkling, every shelf dusted and every rug vacuumed. The squeaky cabinet door would be greased and the dripping faucet fixed, and all of those little things that always got pushed to the bottom of the To Do list would finally get done. And I would say, 'Lexa, did you do the laundry?' And you would say, 'Sorry, I ran out of time.'" 

Lexa looked down at the shirt she'd been folding, then back at Clarke. "So I didn't do it? Even though you asked?"

"No." Clarke let herself smile, but Lexa didn't smile back. She looked around the room – at the shelves that needed dusting and the rug that needed vacuuming and the blankets tossed haphazardly over the back of the couch instead of being folded neatly – and Clarke could see her tallying up all the ways she thought she'd failed, then and now. Which hadn't been the point of the story, and damn it, that's why she never talked about it, about her, about who she'd been before. 

She pushed aside the half-folded shirt and took its place on the couch beside Lexa, taking the hand that reached for the now unfolded garment and squeezing it. "Don't get me wrong. I could get used to this. But babe," she said, and was that the first time she'd said it since... all of this? "It was never about the laundry." She forced another smile, hating how still Lexa was, how cold and unyielding her hand was in Clarke's grasp. 

Slowly, Lexa's fingers curled around hers. Slowly, the lines in her forehead smoothed out. Slowly, the darkness receded from her eyes. "Maybe you shouldn't have told me that," she said. Not an accusation. Almost... a joke?

"Maybe I shouldn't have," Clarke agreed, serious but maybe not entirely. "Are you going to stop now?"

Lexa seemed to consider it for a second, then shook her head and picked up a pair of pants. "I'll finish this," she said. "You can start dinner. I'll come help when I'm done."

"You don't have—" Clarke stopped herself again. Lexa knew she didn't have to. She wanted to, and who was Clarke to say no? She could always chop some onions to explain away the tears.

* * *

Winter slowly relinquished its grip. The pain in Lexa's foot – and so many other parts, but not her mind, which she was told she would have to accept was irreversibly and irretrievably broken, although no one ever used those words – seemed to recede with the snow. They began to take walks together to help Lexa build strength and stamina, and to help both of them feel less like caged animals and more like the people they were or were becoming.

They talked, at first like strangers and then almost like friends. They smiled more and sighed less. They laughed, and sometimes Lexa didn't get the joke but she laughed anyway just because the sound of Clarke's voice made her chest ache with the opposite of pain.

One afternoon in February, or maybe it was March, Clarke stopped and pointed, and Lexa turned and followed her finger to something on the ground, a spot of purple struggling to break through the snow. "That's a crocus," Clarke said, as if the word should mean something to Lexa.

"What's a crocus?" Lexa asked. 

"It's a flower," Clarke explained. 

Lexa tried to remember, but the word conjured nothing. Her mind was as blank and bleak as the winter landscape. "What's a flower?"

Clarke looked at her. Just looked at her for such a long time, and Lexa wanted to look away because she could see Clarke struggling with something – with everything – like she struggled every day but she'd gotten very good over the days and weeks since Lexa came home (was it home?) at hiding it. Not now. Not today. Maybe she didn't try. Maybe she was tired of trying.

She took a step closer and Lexa took a step back and Clarke stopped. 

"I still love you," Clarke said. 

And then she turned and kept walking.

When they got home (was it home? whose home?) Clarke retreated to her room and closed her door, and Lexa let her, only knocking hours after dark to ask if Clarke wanted dinner. Clarke told her there were leftovers in the fridge, which Lexa understood as, 'Not with you,' and she had to accept that too.

She pretended she didn't hear Clarke crying as she walked away.

She ate because she knew Clarke would be upset with her if she didn't eat (but she didn't get to be upset when the roles were reversed, she'd lost that right when she'd lost herself) and washed the dishes and scrubbed the counters and swept the floor, and then moved into the living room and tried to remember all the things she used to do.

When the To Do list – what she could remember of it, and it probably wasn't a half or even a quarter because her stupid, useless brain refused to relinquish to her anything that mattered – was done, she retreated to her room, pausing only briefly in front of Clarke's door that had once been their door, and she thought she almost remembered turning the knob, pushing it open, but she was probably just fooling herself, wishing...

No sound came from the other side now. 

_Good night,_ Lexa thought, raising her hand but not letting herself touch what was now forbidden, before shutting herself behind her own door and getting ready for bed. She was exhausted, but not tired... or maybe it was the other way around. She turned out the lights and crawled under the covers, closed her eyes, but sleep didn't come. Refused to come, because in the quiet she could hear Clarke's heartbroken sobs, maybe real or maybe only in her mind, but it didn't matter. 

Either way, they were her fault.

And there was nothing she could do to fix it, because there was nothing she could do to fix herself. There was no going back, only forward, but when Clarke had looked at her, had said those words Lexa hadn't realized she wanted to hear until they were suspended in the air between them, she'd also realized that they could walk side-by-side but they weren't – would never be – walking on the same path. Not anymore.

Because when Clarke said those words, she was saying them to a woman who didn't exist anymore. She wasn't saying them to _her_. 

And it hurt like hell.

Because just because she couldn't remember didn't mean she couldn't feel, and Lexa knew why the person she had been had fallen in love with Clarke, knew it more and better than anything because she found herself falling all over again. But she would never be who she had been, would never be the woman Clarke was still in love with and always would be. Her feelings – her falling – didn't matter because Clarke would never love her back.

And Lexa was deluding herself to think otherwise. They weren't lovers. They weren't even friends. She was just an obligation Clarke felt she had to fulfill, a vow she'd made in another life to another person whose face Lexa wore, and she would never break it because that wasn't who she was. She'd proven that when she returned to the hospital even when Lexa had no idea who she was. She'd proven it every day since.

She wasn't going to let Lexa go.

Which meant Lexa would have to do it for her. 

Was there a box to check on divorce papers for: 'They aren't the person I married anymore'? 

Would Clarke sign them if there was? 

Probably not. She would look at Lexa, eyes full of hurt and betrayal and everything Lexa didn't want her to feel and want to know what she'd done wrong. How she'd failed Lexa. Because they'd made it work so far, hadn't they? They could keep making it work. They could keep living their separate lives in their separate rooms on opposite sides of the hall. They could be married on paper and roommates in practice, and maybe Clarke could live with that, could call that living, but Lexa couldn't. She didn't want to. 

This – what they were doing – wasn't any kind of life for either of them.

The trouble was Lexa couldn't imagine any other kind of life. Not any kind that she could ever have.

And maybe that was the answer. Maybe—

She jerked upright at the sound of knuckles on her door, rattling it in its frame and maybe she ought to check the hinges, see if they needed tightening. A glance at the clock told her it was past midnight. She got up and cracked open the door, peering out. 

"I couldn't sleep," Clarke said. Her eyes were red-rimmed and a mark from her pillowcase creased her cheek. "Do you want to make cookies?"

And there was something in Clarke's eyes as she looked at Lexa, something Lexa had thought had been extinguished long ago by quiet words in doctor's offices that had sounded too much like condolences to a grieving widow even though Lexa had been sitting right there: Hope.

Like she wanted Lexa to say yes. 

Even though she knew this Lexa wasn't her Lexa. 

And the dark thoughts that had seemed some reasonable, so logical, only moments before were now unthinkable, and how dare she? How dare she even consider adding to Clarke's grief? Because it wouldn't take it away. It wouldn't allow her to move on. No matter what Lexa said, what words she conjured to try to explain, nothing would ever keep Clarke from blaming herself, every day for the rest of her life.

And then neither of them would be living. 

At least here, now, there was hope. 

And even if Lexa couldn't give Clarke her wife back, she could at least be someone worth loving. 

"I'd love to," she said. 

Clarke went to the pantry to retrieve the ingredients while Lexa dug the trays out of one of the cabinets, and they mixed the dough and began to portion it out, pretending not to notice when an uncooked glob disappeared here and there despite the risk of salmonella. 

"Do you remember—" Clarke started to ask, then stopped herself like she always did.

"No," Lexa said, like she usually didn't because she didn't need to when they both knew the answer already. "But tell me."

* * *

While the cookies baked, Clarke went into the back of her closet and pulled out the boxes she'd hidden there, dragging them – a little dusty, just like the memories they contained – out into the living room and into the light.

She let Lexa open them, trying not to allow herself to hope that somehow something in them would spark a memory, that the key to unlocking her past – their past – had been stashed amongst the mementos all along. When the timer went off, signaling the cookies were done, Clarke left her to go pull them from the oven. She returned a few minutes later to find that Lexa had found their wedding album and was staring at a photo of them in their dresses, holding their bouquets, smiling even as they kissed. 

She looked up at Clarke. "Who asked who to marry them?" 

Clarke winced. Maybe she should have expected the question, but Lexa hadn't seemed all that interested in anything else she'd found, and of all the things she could have asked about their wedding, their marriage... "You asked me," she said. Then, softer, "I almost said no." 

Lexa cocked her head, that new gesture that belonged only to her and not to the woman in the photos. "Why?"

"It was right after you'd come home from a deployment," Clarke said. "I thought maybe you were only doing it so I would receive benefits if anything happened to you if you got sent out again." 

"Was I?" Lexa asked. 

"No!" Clarke sank down on the floor next to her, closing the album and setting it aside because she didn't like the way Lexa was looking at the person she'd once been. "Lexa... we didn't always see eye-to-eye on everything, but you weren't a... a bad person. We loved each other." 

_I still love you,_ she thought, but she didn't dare say it again. She shouldn't have said it the first time. What good did it do either of them? Because Clarke didn't know who she loved. Not really. She still loved the woman she'd married, but she knew this woman – this Lexa – wasn't her. But she loved her too, didn't she? Or was she clinging to a ghost, thinking one day she would look into this stranger's eyes (though she grew less and less strange every day) and see her Lexa – her _wife_ \- behind them? 

"The cookies are ready," she said instead. 

When they'd eaten all the cookies they could stand to eat, and put away the few that remained, they had no reason to stay up any longer, so they packed who they used to be back into boxes. Clarke lifted one, and Lexa the other, and for the first time since she'd come home, Lexa stepped over the threshold into the room they'd once shared. She set the box where Clarke pointed, in the empty half of the closet that had once been hers, and Clarke wondered if she realized that's why there was so much space.

"I'll see you in the morning," Lexa said, with just the tiniest upward tilt to her voice. 

"Yes," Clarke said, and watched her go. But when she got to the door, Clarke felt something in her chest open up, a rising panic she couldn't explain, and she nearly tripped over her own feet, snatching at Lexa's arm before she could reach the knob. "Wait!"

Lexa looked down at her wrist, then up at Clarke. 

"Don't—" Clarke shook her head, trying to catch her breath like she'd sprinted around the block, not stumbled a few steps across the room. "Do you—" She stopped again, not sure how to ask what she wanted – needed – to, and what finally came out wasn't a question because she didn't want to hear Lexa say no. "Stay," she said. "Please." She glanced toward the bed. "If you want to. I'd like it if you stayed."

* * *

Spring finally arrived, and everywhere they looked there was new life. Lexa tried not to laugh at the sound Clarke made when they spotted a couple of baby bunnies hopping through the yard, but Clarke heard the snort-cough she couldn't quite suppress and gave her a mock-furious look, telling her off for scaring off the bunnies even though they had only gone a few feet to munch on fresh clover.

When they grew tired of endless trips around their neighborhood, Clarke drove them to the botanical garden, and Lexa knew they were both remembering what she'd said on the walk when they'd seen the first flowers of spring as she pointed out new and different varieties. Lexa was impressed by how many she knew – most if not all of them – until she spotted a little sign that gave the actual name and realized that Clarke was making some – if not most – of them up. 

She committed them all to memory anyway. 

They went back the next week, because it was a nice place to walk and because there might be new things that had come into bloom since their last visit, and this time Lexa told Clarke the names of the flowers as they meandered down one of the paths.

"That's not—" Clarke started to say, and then stopped. She looked at the flower, and the sign that named it something else entirely, and then at Lexa, who tried and failed not to smile. "What's that one?" she asked, and Lexa told her, real names when she knew them and the ones Clarke had given them when she didn't, and she watched realization dawn in Clarke's eyes, brighter and brighter and filmed with tears, and she reached out and put one hand on either side of Lexa's face and pulled her down and kissed her.

Clarke kissed her. 

And Lexa waited to see if it was an accident, an impulse she would immediately regret, but Clarke didn't pull away so she put her arms around her and kissed her back.

* * *

They went back every week, to see what was newly bloomed and in need of naming. They walked hand-in-hand up one path and down another, until their feet were sore and their hearts were full. They were usually too tired afterward to want to cook, so they would pick a different restaurant to visit, and some were places they'd visited all the time and some were places they'd never tried, either because it hadn't occurred to them or because they hadn't existed. Lexa sometimes tried things the old her never would have, but often when she looked over the menu with fresh eyes she still ended up choosing an old favorite. 

Clarke learned not to give those moments too much meaning, but she stopped trying to not allow herself to smile. Maybe – or mostly – because when she did, Lexa always smiled back.

As spring crept toward summer, Lexa needed Clarke less and Clarke felt more confident leaving her alone for a few hours or a day, though she was never more than a phone call away. When she was asked to attend a conference for work that would take her away overnight, with the heavy implication that saying no wasn't really an option, she found herself clinging to Lexa long past the time when she should have been out the door. 

"I'll be fine, Clarke," Lexa said. "I promise."

"You better be," Clarke told her, kissing her one last time... and then once more. "I love you," she whispered, but only after her back was turned and there was no chance Lexa could hear.

When Clarke got home the next day, the house was empty and there was no answer when she called Lexa's name. Tears well in her eyes and she dashed them away, racing from one room to the next while trying to get her hands to stop shaking long enough to tap in her security code and bring up the app that would tell her where Lexa – or Lexa's phone – was. 

When it came up, it said she was here, and Clarke fumbled her way to her contacts and called.

"Where are you?" she demanded when Lexa picked up on the last ring. 

"In the back yard," Lexa said. "Come see."

The back yard. Right. Clarke swiped at her eyes, laughing at herself for not considering that Lexa might want to be outside on a beautiful sunny day. She hung up and slipped her phone back into her pocket, going out the front door and walking around to the back to give herself a minute to compose herself. 

For a second, she couldn't quite comprehend what she saw. Where once there had been an unbroken expanse of lawn, there was now a big brown patch. Nearby, there were dozens – maybe hundreds – of brilliantly colored flowers of all different varieties, and Lexa standing proudly, one elbow propped on a rake, or maybe a hoe, the queen of all she surveyed. 

"I thought it might be nice to have a garden of our own," she said, when Clarke's arms around her ribs loosened enough to allow her to breathe. 

Clarke could only nod, her face pressed into the sweaty, dirt-smeared curve of her neck. 

"Do you want to help me decide where they go?" Lexa asked, her lips brushing Clarke's temple and her breath feathering through Clarke's hair.

Clarke nodded again. "We'll have to give them all names," she said. 

Lexa smiled. "Then we'd better get to work."

The sun had nearly set by the time the last of the plants were in the ground, and Lexa got out the hose to give them a drink, and Clarke didn't think it was entirely accidental when a little bit of the spray found her. 

"I know I need a shower, but I would prefer it be with hot water," Clarke said, scowling. Lexa did her best to look innocent, which wasn't very good, but Clarke couldn't and didn't want to hold a grudge.

They went inside, and Lexa's longer legs won the race to the shower, and even though there was another one she could have used, Clarke slipped out of her clothes and under the spray with her. And she'd seen Lexa naked since everything, had touched her when she had been too broken still to do it all herself, but this was different. This time, Lexa touched her back. 

It was a short stumble from shower to bed, their still damp skin soaking the sheets but they didn't care – didn't even notice until the water had been joined by sweat and other things, and they were a tangle of languid limbs. Making love to – with – Lexa was just like Clarke remembered and something entirely new all at once. It hurt and it healed, and when Lexa's lips brushed Clarke's temple and the tears soaked into the fine hair there, she didn't ask if they were happy or sad tears because Clarke knew she knew they were both. 

"I love you," Lexa whispered, the first time she'd said it, or at least the first time she'd let Clarke hear. Maybe the first time she thought Clarke would be able to hear it without wishing it was coming from a memory's lips, but Clarke didn't ask.

"I love you too," she said instead, both of them accepting that 'you' might always be a little bit complicated, but it didn't make the words mean any less.

* * *

Leaves in shades of scarlet and ochre and gold had begun to fall, forming drifts in the yard that Lexa would need to do something about, but not today. Today it was raining, and there was a chill in the air that reminded Lexa there were parts of her that would never fully heal. (Other than her memory, which she was finally coming to peace with as the places where things weren't began to fill with all of the things that still were.)

Clarke sat down next to her on the couch, and Lexa lifted the corner of the blanket she'd been huddled under, draping it over them both as Clarke cuddled close. She could feel Clarke's hands were shaking as she laced their fingers together. When she looked over, Clarke's expression was soft and serious, and she made no attempt to hide the hope in her eyes when she asked, "Lexa, will you marry me?"

"We're already married," Lexa said, not understanding.

"I married her," Clarke said, looking toward the wedding picture that was back on the mantle, along with a few others of memories Clarke treasured even though they were no longer shared, and new photos of memories they did share, and hopefully always would. "I want to marry _you_."

And this time the word didn't feel complicated at all.

"Yes," Lexa said. "Yes. I'll marry you."

* * *

"Wassat?" Madi asked, her favorite (and seemingly only, for the number of times she repeated it) word, pointing to a purple flower just poking through the snow. Lexa scooped her up before her tiny toddler feet could trample it. 

"That's a crocus," Clarke said. 

"What's a crocus?" Aden asked, returning from his very important mission of stomping on the iced-over puddles on the sidewalk ahead. 

"It's flower," Clarke said, showing him, then looking over his head at Lexa. 

Lexa smiled and reached for her, drawing her entire family to her and holding them close. Her lips brushed against her wife's as they whispered together, "I still love you."


End file.
